Tag Archives: Efren Paredes

I mailed a letter today. And I did what I don’t usually do. I pleaded. For my friend. For his life.

I’ve blogged about juvenile life sentences before, it’s true. But now the constitutional arguments have gone through the Supreme Court. The answers have come down. The states, including Michigan, have answered with legislation; juvenile life-without-parole sentences are on the docket, and … this suddenly means something horribly personal.

Because my friend, who has served over twenty-seven years for a crime he never committed, gets to ask a court to change his sentence. From no parole, ever, to maybe parole, someday. In other words, to be resentenced to a term of years.

It’s a process where everybody is supposed to get the chance to talk. Prosecutor. Victim’s family. Defense. The convicted. The experts. And friends. So that I get to say a few words too. To write to the trial court, testifying that in my experience, Efren Paredes is a fit person to rejoin society.

There are restrictions. I’m not allowed to argue his innocence. Twenty-seven years on a wrongful conviction doesn’t get to weigh. I’m writing for a man who is guilty to the eyes of the law–trying to convince someone that he’s sane, that he’s humane, that he’s done nothing but lift up other people and look upward himself for twenty-seven years. That all he wants to do is go home to sit on his own front porch.

Then, after adding my personal testimony, I’m reduced to the head-banging, stuck-where-the-sun-don’t-shine argument that people who have actually committed these kinds of crimes have generally gone home in many fewer years. That therefore, on comparative grounds, this supposedly guilty man’s sentence has been unfair. Does anybody not see the irony of the insult?

And then…. I have nothing left to do but plead.

I wonder if anyone will listen. The prosecutor wants a life sentence without parole all over again. The guilty teenagers have served their time and been released. None are interested in coming back and telling the truth, or clearing the one they blamed for plotting their crime. The victim’s family has been adamant throughout the process that this last symbol of their loss must pay, and pay forever.

Only my friend, Efren Paredes, remains hopeful that somehow, someway, someday, somebody is going to acknowledge the truth and act with justice; even though every door to it has been slammed in his face, over and over again.

I never knew what that crashing door sounded like, until I made my first visit to Muskegon Correctional Facility–my first visit to a prison. It’s the door between the visitor lobby … and everything else. It’s electronically controlled, and it hits with such a slam that you’d expect the glass in it to shatter. Everytime an officer comes in, goes out, slam. Again and again and again.

Sitting on the hard plastic chair in that lobby, waiting to be called up, I look around me, and I realize: except for a sprinkling of somebody’s fathers, we are a company of women. Black, white and hispanic. Mostly under forty. Dressed up, as if we were going out to dinner. Eager. Anxious. Some sad. None of us looking as if the men in our lives ought to be in prison. A collection of stereotypes busted.

We are called up, we are searched, we go in. We find our seats next to the men we’ve come to see. We get to hug, just quickly. We talk in very, very low voices, trying to be private while the whole room is talking. The girl sitting behind me is crying. A black couple–inmate and companion–take the seats across from us, and I can’t help wondering at the unrealness: how tall and beautiful they both are, how perfectly she’s dressed, how we are all four sitting here, polite and polished as if we’ve met in an upper-class restaurant. We’re not allowed to talk to them, but I ask, just once, if our table is in their way. No, she says gently. Everything’s fine.

We eat vending-machine chips and candy and sandwiches off styrofoam plates on a cheap plastic table, and act like we’re out to dinner. We talk and talk until we’re both tired and can’t think of anything to say, and then we try to go on talking anyway, because otherwise, it’s over. And when it is over, we throw the plates in the garbage, and hug–quickly–and I go.

Slam.

I’ve written before about the difference: between not knowing and knowing somebody who is wrongfully incarcerated. How it’s so much easier to ignore the fact that innocent men go to prison, when it’s not personal. And to that end, I need to make a confession.

There is a time, and not far gone, when I would have looked past Charles Lewis and not seen him. I am ashamed, and it is truth.

Charles Lewis is black. He is from Detroit. He is fifty-eight years old, and has spent forty-one of those years serving a juvenile life sentence without parole. The circumstances of his case overwhelmingly vindicate him; and if that were not enough, the outrageous mishandling of his files in the court system–the original file has been completely lost–should require redress. Not, however, in the eyes of his prosecutor, who wants him to give up his life without ever seeing freedom.

I’d never heard of Charles Lewis’ conviction, or that he has protested his innocence for forty-one years. That’s not what I’m ashamed of. But I am, and I think I always will be ashamed, knowing that I would have read this article, and blinked and gone on, except for Efren….

Because the first thought that hit me, on reading the article above, was this: that when a man says he’s innocent, for that long, no matter what it’s cost him, he probably is. That when the evidence is strong in his favor, it’s probably true. That innocent men do go to prison, too frequently. I know that, because I know Efren.

And I’m ashamed that it took something real and personal and connected to my experience to make me stop and listen to Charles Lewis, when the most basic course of abstract justice would have demanded just that.

It all makes me wonder, how many people are listening to Efren? At last count, seventy-nine had signed the latest petition on his behalf. The one for the trial court, regarding his resentencing. I’m linking to it here…

I admit to being a rubbernecker. Not where there are lights and sirens, not when the fire department goes out, but when a public figure’s political implosion is in the making, oh, yes. It’s such a nicely predictable event. Stupid, offensive, sexist, racist comment. Internet KABOOM. Shards everywhere. Countdown to apology in five … four … three….

“Sorry.”

Which no one, least of all me, believes, but hey, he said it. That counts, right?

We have this thing with apology. Be a murderer, be a rapist, be whatever vile thing human beings have ever invented, but for Pete’s sake apologize, and we’ll think just a little better of you. We might even let you have another chance. Just SAY IT.

I’m not actually that impressed with the way we reward the manipulative, the groveling and the insincere. But parole boards go on doing it. Whether in terms of pardons, commutations or paroles, remorse is a factor in the offender’s case. You have to say it.

Which, if you didn’t do it, means you can lie to God, yourself, your fellow man and the State that sentenced you–or you can go on rotting out your sentence. There is no other alternative. Parole boards are not allowed to consider the possibility of innocence. Legally, you were ruled guilty and they must consider you guilty. Therefore, you must have remorse.

The murderer who can admit what he did has a better chance at freedom than you do.

Point two: we have this thing with believing convicted people must be guilty. Even though we know innocent men go to prison, we can’t quite believe it until years after overwhelming evidence exonerates them. This is the other societal cramp that binds the first one into law. Both need to change. Because they are so socially and legally engrained, they won’t change without a great change in social understanding. Let’s get on it, people.

Starting with, I want you to see this film. It needs to be made, must be released and shared. There are just over three weeks left of a fundraiser that badly needs to be rocketed off the ground. Please reblog, tweet, Facebook, pass on. Help.

And I thank you.

***

Natural Life: A Case Study. “The question of parole and remorse for one juvenile lifer.”

From Semaj Moran’s point of view, his customers cheated him. Big time. It was only ten dollars worth of marijuana, but the two women didn’t even pay that. Instead, they gave him a fake bill. He decided to collect what was due.

In a home on the bleak outer edge of Detroit–Pontiac, Michigan–Semaj Moran and an adult accomplice settled the score. Semaj Moran used the gun, twice. Loretta Fournier and Luann Robinson died. Loretta had been shot three times. One of the shots entered her head at close range.

Semaj Moran was fifteen years old.

Today he is seventeen, sentenced last month to prison for the rest of his natural life–a new poster child for juvenile life sentence cases in Michigan. A new focus, too, for the troubling question: what do we do with them?

As someone who comes down hard on the side of victim’s rights and justice, I’m not eager to see Semaj Moran back out on the streets at 18 or 21. More, until recently, I would have said that keeping him locked up for the rest of his life is the right thing to do. He ended two lives. He was old enough to know the meaning of right and wrong. Above all, he broke his contract with the community that has a right to be safe from him from now on.

I like being safe, or as safe as I can be. I don’t want people who committed violent crimes back in the community–in my neighborhood, on my street, living next door. I don’t want to feel threatened when I go to my car at night. And if justice means anything, the families of the victims of these destructive children and teenagers shouldn’t have to wonder who’s next.

I’ve been set in that opinion, in one case or another, for most of my adult life. That is, until I met Efren Paredes. Efren, serving out his own life for a crime he never committed, is convinced that juveniles need a chance to turn around.

Straight up, I was not willing to think this. I’m committed to Efren’s case–wrongful conviction is wrongful conviction–but I’ve struggled to meet his thinking. Yet he has made me think, and remember–to think about the teenagers I’ve known. How scattered they can be. How poor their judgment is. How they can make a colossal, life-wrecking mistake and not understand how they got there.

I remember how smart-stupid I was as a teenager. Easily smart-stupid enough to think I could live forever, because when you’re a teenager you know nothing really bad can really happen. At least, not to you.

I recall what I’ve known for years, and it matters more now: that the adult brain–the part that controls judgment–doesn’t fully develop until age twenty-five. Odd to look back on it–how the world changed after I was twenty-five. All the adults I knew got smarter somehow, but I’m pretty sure that didn’t have anything to do with me starting to think like one.

And yet–who in their right mind, including me, wants a child capable of brutal murder let loose all over again?

Much of Michigan thinks the same way. Juvenile or adult. Parole or life sentence. Either or. If you’re too much of a risk to release at eighteen, you’re just too much of a risk. Senate Bill 319 proceeds on nearly the same lines. Alright, we have to give a judge the option of allowing you parole–but we won’t make it a very big option. Let’s say forty-five years. We’re not taking any chances.

There was a time I would have said, “Fair enough.” When it comes to public safety, I’m not big on taking chances or giving them. But change is happening, and I’m willing to think this question through:

Can we–or how can we–craft laws that protect our communities and take into account that a child, even a teenager, is still a malleable, perhaps salvageable thing?

Florida and Indiana are among the states showing a possible way. Florida, for example, has what are called probation and restitution centers. While these are short-term residential programs–not to exceed twelve months–their services and structure could suggest a longer term model.

“Offender/residents participate in group counseling and case management sessions. The social learning environment provides offenders/residents with continuous peer support and challenges in daily living skills. The major learning themes are criminal thinking patterns, life skills, budgeting, personal responsibility and accountability, and employment readiness or skills training. Offender/residents prepare for re-entry into the work environment and transition into the community. “

Indiana, too, is changing, with legislation recently passed to allow judges to impose suspended adult sentences on juveniles: according to the IndyStar,

“Judges can sentence juveniles as adults but send them to a juvenile facility, where proponents of the law say there would be more supervision, better educational opportunities and a better chance to turn their lives around. Then, at age 18 when it’s time for the juvenile to be moved to an adult prison, there will be another hearing before a judge.

“If the 18-year-old can convince the judge he or she has straightened out, the judge can suspend the rest of the sentence. The young man or woman would then walk free, but any slip-up and he or she could be sent to adult prison to serve out the rest of the sentence.”

Too easy? Too risky? So what might conservative Michigan do?

I’ll introduce the possibility I have in mind by saying that I do not believe a young person can or should resume a fully normal life after committing murder. To do so requires community trust, and the community has the right to withhold or reserve that trust.

On the other hand, there’s more than one way to approach the violation of trust–a long-term approach.

***

Let’s imagine that “Billy,” at the age of fifteen, shoots a classmate and robs him of a cellphone. Under Michigan law as it stands, Billy is likely up for life-without-parole. Prosecutors, judge and jury all agree, he committed the crime, and a much-loved teenager is dead. Billy had no excuse for the shooting. He took a life, and he’s going to give up all freedom of his own. The idea of letting him back on the street at eighteen is laughable.

But let’s change the law, and change Billy’s story.

We’ll say that up to the age of eighteen, Billy stays in a secure facility for juvenile offenders. He finishes high school, receives intensive counseling, and stays out of trouble.

Billy, now eighteen, moves to a secure facility created by our imaginary new law. This is a facility for youthful offenders who were juveniles when their crimes were committed. It contains no offender who was older than 17 at the commission of the crime. In this facility, a wide range of counseling services, education, and work programs are offered. Inmates earn their way into desirable job training programs by completing basic ones successfully. Billy not only continues counseling, but enters college and completes an associate degree. By age twenty-one, he’s ready for the next-step–training in a technical, mechanical or agricultural field that will make him a highly skilled worker.

At twenty-five, seven years after entering the institution, Billy is up for his first probation review. Probation has graduated levels, and is highly restricted. However, having completed all available counseling and training programs AND having continued without major violations of rehabilitation center policies, Billy is eligible. He would not be eligible if he had failed any of the required programs.

His first step in restricted probation is to find a position with one of the rehabilitation center’s partner companies. These are successful companies who helped to provide Billy with his training, and will take a strong role in mentoring him in his new job.

For the next five years, Billy must return every night–either to the rehab center or to a half-way house in the locality of his job. He must wear an electronic monitoring device. He must meet weekly with his probation officer AND a counselor, who will work with his employer-mentors to make sure his performance meets company standards. If he fails to do his job successfully, he must return to the rehabilitation center until he can be placed in another job. The five years of successful, supervised work experience are a requirement for the next step–as is paying restitution from his earnings to the family of his victim.

Assuming Billy has passed these five years with flying colors, he is now thirty. It’s time for him to branch out. He can now choose another employment. He can also choose his place of residence within the State of Michigan. However, he must continue to report to his probation officer every month, and maintain steady employment for the next five years. He must continue to wear an electronic monitoring device. He must check in with a counselor every month. The counselor’s job is to spot problems, either in employment or living conditions, and work with Billy to help him make constructive choices. If the counselor and probation officer agree that Billy is running into trouble, a board can require him to resume more frequent counseling and monitoring appointments, or help him to find employment again.

At the age of thirty-five, twenty years after the crime he committed, Billy is a college-educated, skilled worker, with ten years of solid job history behind him. If he has committed NO violations of his parole, and maintains a productive lifestyle, a judge can choose to suspend the rest of his sentence. ANY violent felony violation committed during the rest of his life will result in his return to adult prison for life.

If Billy has completed most of his programs successfully, but had one or two parole violations, the judge can decide how long and under what conditions to extend his monitored parole. Four or more minor parole violations may be grounds for revoking parole and returning him to the appropriate secured facility until he can prove he deserves another chance at parole.

But what if Billy never passed at all? What if he never got through the early programs, prior to age eighteen, and later in the youthful offender rehabilitation center?

This is where conditions kick in. If Billy made it through some steps, but not others, he may still be at the center, working to fulfill the parole-after-job-training requirements. If, by the age of twenty-five, he has never made any effort, has committed other violent offenses while in custody, or is found to be a community risk with a psychiatric disorder not responding to treatment, the State of Michigan must petition a judge to declare him incorrigible. Upon a judge’s declaration of incorrigibility, Billy will then join the adult prison population to serve out life without parole, or, if his mental condition warrants it, be sent to a secured psychiatric facility for life.

Essentially, he will never be free, unless and until: he is a competent adult. He proves his willingness to improve himself. He makes restitution. He shows that he has the life-skills and self-control to make it through a highly restrictive program of correction.

***

Billy’s story is not the law in Michigan yet. It may never be the law. But it’s a possibility of how the law could work, given a willingness on the part of the State to invest in the potential and future of its youngest prisoners.

In the meantime, with House Bill 4806 coming up for consideration, we may be looking at baby steps–at one change at a time, even a gradual one, to the meaning of juvenile justice. Allowing Michigan judges to choose a term of years–and hopefully, from a wide range of probation options following that term of years–would be a good start. Certainly, it’s time to move past “either-or”–a dichotomy that’s been alternately too lenient or else ineffectively harsh.

I’ve never watched sausage made, but I’m pretty sure John Godfrey Saxe was right. The process of making legislation involves a lot of chopping and squishing and other things you’d rather not see, smell, or hear.

As I promised last week, however, I’m back to lead a tour of the kitchen and the upcoming bills that affect juvenile lifers in Michigan. Start this way, as we walk into the messy middle of things.

Last year the Supreme Court changed the recipe, and now Michigan and other states have some cooking to do. The Court has ruled 5-4: no, you may not have laws that require you to sentence children less than eighteen to life without parole.

What this means: Juveniles can still be sentenced to life without parole. But now the judge must have a choice; even in cases that used to require life without parole, period.

So, let’s look first at House Bill 4806. This bill applies to prisoners who were sentenced before January 1, 2014, under the age of eighteen and are now serving mandatory life sentences without parole. Key word, mandatory.

The House bill is intended to deal with past sentences, not future ones. It allows either side–prosecutor or prisoner–to ask the court for resentencing. It also allows both sides to have input. There are three options for the new sentence:

*Life without parole (again)
*Life with possibility of parole
*A term of years at the judge’s discretion

The Michigan Senate, however, would like to limit any future leniency. Senate Bill 319 deals with cases after January 1, 2014, and it is severe.

The options it includes:

*Life without parole (again)
*Life with possibility of parole after 45 years.

In effect, the Senate hopes to come as close as possible to nullifying the Supreme Court’s ruling. A term of years, as suggested by the House, is not even an option. Judges once again have very little discretion in creating a sentence to fit a particular case.

Both bills, however, require the court to consider factors including the child or teen’s home life, age and mental development.

Still with me? Ready to go on?

House Bill 4807 makes no real change to the law. It deals with family court jurisdiction over juveniles and involves a few word changes and an update of agency names. Legal copy-editing, more or less.

House Bill 4808 updates sentences for the Michigan Penal Code, and it does so by adding clauses based on the passage of Senate Bill 319. In other words, sentences remain the same, except for adding a possibility of parole for juvenile lifers after forty-five years.

Both of these bills have to do with the way parole hearings are conducted, and also with eligibility for parole. Believe me, this is important. House Bill 4809 contains what could be, from a prisoner’s perspective, a very nasty change.

First, the Senate bill (SIB 318) reflects Bill 319. Certain crimes are not eligible for parole except in the case of juvenile lifers after forty-five years if the court allowed them life with parole.

The rest is the law as it stands. Prisoners serving life sentences eligible for parole may see the parole board after fifteen years. They must review the prisoner’s file every five years after that. A public hearing is required before parole is granted or denied.

The House, on the other hand, would presumably like to save time and money. House Bill 4809 allows the parole board to go no further than an interview with the prisoner conducted by one member of the parole board every two years. If the board declines to conduct a public hearing, parole is considered to be denied. The mandatory five year file-review and public hearing is removed from the law altogether.

If this change in the law is passed, prisoners will lose the chance to talk with board members who may see things differently than their interviewer. Under the new system, even though one board member alone does not determine parole, he or she is placed in a position of strong influence. It may be a cheaper way–but I’m not convinced it will be a fair one.

Time to wrap up, and we now exit the kitchen, glad for the fresh air. For those who have stuck it out this long, thanks for coming on the tour! Next stop, a breakfast restaurant where we’ll have bacon, eggs, and sausage–though personally, I’ll be taking home a doggie bag.

***

Blogging next time: how a judge’s decision forces Michigan to apply the Supreme Court’s ruling to past cases; why House Bill 4806 still needs to be law; and a request from Efren. I’ll also talk about why I’ve never supported parole for juvenile lifers before–but I’m changing my mind.

The sun sets early on Lake Michigan in March. In Saint Joseph, a small coastal Michigan city known for tourism, early French explorers, and a classic lighthouse, a lazy wind sweeps in off the shore ice–lazy because “it doesn’t bother to go around you, it just goes straight through.”

March 8th, 1989, was colder than usual; the windchill only twenty degrees above zero-fahrenheit. The sun went down at 6:44 pm. By 9 pm, it was bitter dark, with the parking lot lights of Roger’s Vineland Foods reflecting yellow-gray under the clouds.

Inside the store, fifteen-year-old Efren Paredes worked with his manager, Rick Tetzlaff, to finish up the last details of a long day. Double-coupon day meant extra work. Others had gone home, but earlier in the evening, Rick had asked Efren to stay, and to call his mother for permission.

“Nine-thirty,” she told him. At the latest. Remember, it’s a school night.

Efren knew. He was already keeping up with the honor roll, foreign language club, Key Club, soccer…. Once home, he’d still have homework to do.

At 9:22, he punched out. Then he and Rick walked outside to Rick’s car. The wind had calmed, and their breath froze in the air. Home was only a mile away, more or less. Still too far to walk on a night like this one.

Moments later, Efren was inside the house, and Rick had driven away. Efren kissed his mother, grabbed pizza for a makeshift supper, and went to his room to do his homework.

Rick, in the meantime, drove back to the store. He still had work to do. It was never finished. Within half an hour, Rick Tetzlaff, at twenty-eight years old, was dead–shot in a back room for $11,000 in cash and checks.

One week later, Efren was arrested for murder.

What followed that night is a tangled story of high-school animosities, false witnesses, zealous police and still more zealous prosecutors–a defense attorney who made little defense, a jury with members who had connections to the murdered man’s family–a boy sitting stiff and terrified, watching his life sworn away, warned by his own counsel “not to cry,” while older boys, desperate to escape their own life sentences, put their crimes on him.

For nearly twenty-five years, he can only say, “I didn’t do it.”

But Efren is not a weakling. He knows he could have been free a long time ago. The cost? Five words. “I’m sorry. I did it.”

For parole board members and prosecutors, it’s called showing remorse. Lack of it indicates the worst case–a sociopath who can’t be reformed.

But for Efren, it’s not just five words that stand between him and freedom. It’s his integrity.

He won’t say those words. “I will not take responsibility for a crime I did not commit,” he told a parole board five years ago. “I never will do that even if it meant I could leave today.”*

With his appeals long exhausted, he has few chances left. One of them lies in a recent Supreme Court decision to end mandatory life sentences for juveniles. The State of Michigan is considering legislation in response that could force cases like Efren’s back into review.

Speaking from long and painful experience, Efren asks for help–not for himself alone, but for other child-prisoners who have been deemed irreclaimable.

As part of his petition at change.org, he requests that the final language of the bill should include the judicial power to sentence juveniles for a term of years–where Michigan judges now have, in certain cases, only the option of life-with-parole, or life-without-parole.

The introductory text of the petition is as follows:

Members of the Michigan Senate and House of Representatives are scheduled to convene on August 27, 2013 to discuss House Bills 4806, 4807, 4808, and 4809 that would give Miller v. Alabama, 132 S.Ct 2455 (2012), retroactive application to cases that exhausted their appellate review prior to the high court ruling. In its decision the U.S. Supreme Court ended the imposition of mandatory life without parole (LWOP) sentences for juveniles nationwide.

Supporters of the bills are urging legislators to include in the final version language that provides judges with discretion to sentence juvenile offenders to a term of years rather than only the options of LWOP or parolable life sentences for each juvenile offender when considering mitigating circumstances. We oppose disallowing judges from exercising their professional discretion when sentencing juveniles and believe that sentences imposed should be rendered on a case-by-case basis.

You are invited to sign this petition which will send the message below to Rep. Joseph Haveman along with your individual state senator and representative. Your legislators will be contacted based on your zip code. You are also asked to share a link to this petition widely via e-mail, Facebook, Twitter and other available social media platforms. Along with your messages and posts you are asked to invite others to re-post and share the link as well.

We want to send a strong message to legislators about the important need to pass this legislation and reform the existing flawed sentencing scheme that condemns children to die in Michigan prisons. Draconian sentencing of juvenile offenders has no place in a civilized nation that prides itself on being a human rights leader in the world.

You can help support passage of these bills by attending the legislative hearing which will be held at the House Office Building, Room 519, on Tuesday, August 27, 2013 at 9:00 A.M. Please encourage as many people to attend as possible and to provide written and/or verbal testimony expressing support for passage of the bills.

It is important to tell stories of growth and maturation after a child makes a terrible mistake. Let legislators know that a second chance, to demonstrate how adolescence affected choices and the unique capacity for growth provides hope, sustains good behavior, and promotes family involvement in working towards rehabilitation and release.

“In the end we will not remember the words of our enemies, only the silence of our friends.” (Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.)